Conference programme

Aims

In years gone by, the School's research conference has been the focal point for the exchange of information regarding the substantial amount of research done by postgraduate students in the School.

Despite the considerable (financial) cost of the conference, we believe it is one of the most effective ways of fostering a sense of community and common purpose among the research students and staff of the School.

The academic aims of the conference can be summarised as:

To provide our postgraduate students with a serious "dry-run" of preparing and presenting a paper in a full conference atmosphere

To produce, as the proceedings, a document detailing the current state-of-research in the School for both internal and external use, and

To provide a deadline to stimulate the final completion of the many "almost finished" projects that we all have.

The most important thing about the conference is that you get up and give it a go. The talk you present does not have to be perfect or even particularly polished - in fact, this is your opportunity to present imperfect or incomplete work and get some sympathetic yet serious feedback on either the presentation or the work itself.

The Australian Computer Society recently adopted our research conference as part of their recommended best practice model - so let's keep it going!

Call for papers

Papers are invited from all members of the School. The conference proceedings will include both full research papers and and short papers on new research directions.

The expectations on research students at various stages of their studies are clarified below. Contributions are also encouraged from staff, from project students, and from participants from other WA universities and industry or government organisations.

Beginning Postgraduates [Those starting after 1 January 2005]:
You should submit a short (one or more pages) abstract or research proposal outlining the area that you wish to study, and present a talk on your area at the conference. The proposal and discussion need not be very detailed, and are in no way binding. Its purpose is simply to give others some idea of your planned area of research, and allow them to share with you the benefit of any experience they may have in related areas. For example, it may be that some of the staff or students can help with some pointers to literature, software, and resources within the School that have been used on previous projects in related areas.

Postgraduates [Full-time PhD students within their first three years, part-time PhD students within their first four years, MSc students within their first two years]:
You are expected to submit a full (about ten pages) paper related to your work for inclusion in the proceedings, and to present a talk on the work at the conference. For those who have completed one year this might be oriented more towards surveying the state of the art in your chosen field, discussing of problems you plan to address, and your progress so far. For those in later years it is likely to include more of your own contributions, and might be used as a practice paper for a conference or journal. If you'd like to discuss further what is expected please see your supervisor or one of the organisers.

Finishing Postgraduates [Postgraduates outside the above categories]:
You are strongly encouraged to give a talk on your work, but since it is recognised that you may be finishing off and writing up according to fairly tight deadlines, a single abstract page may optionally be submitted in place of a written paper. The page should contain title, author(s), and abstract.

Staff, Research Fellows, Visitors, etc:You are invited to give a talk on a subject of interest, and submit either an abstract page (see above) or a paper for the proceedings. These may be technical research talks or talks on topics of broader interest (eg. the future of computer science, etc).

Project Students:
If you have some work that you would like to present - maybe from a paper on your project work - you are welcome to submit a paper. But otherwise you are invited to just come along, observe, question, discuss, and have fun!

Information about authors and speakers

Papers should be prepared using the templates provided and should be no more than 10 pages in length in this format. Read the ACM SIG Author Guide for detailed information about the preparation of manuscripts, but please be sure to use the CSSEtemplate.cls file instead of using the ACM SIG (acm_proc_article-sp.cls) class file.

You will get the best results and your files will be easiest to handle if you use LaTeX2e for the preparation of your camera-ready manuscript together with the corresponding class file CSSEtemplate.cls. Use bibliography style {plain} and see the sample bibliography sigproc.bib for example entries. A sample conference paper in the required format is available, together with the corresponding LaTeX file.

Using MS Word is not encouraged, since the layout of the pages (the position of figures and paragraphs) can change from printout to printo ut. Having said this, we do provide the template CSSEtemplate.doc to help MS Word users to prepare their camera-ready manuscripts.

Submissions should be completed via the online submission page.

Please note the deadlines for papers submitted to the conference. These deadlines are necessary in order to allow time for reviewing, collating, and printing the proceedings before the event. Note that even if your draft paper is not complete you should still submit what you have so far to your supervisor at this time.

It is anticipated that each speaker will be allocated 25 minutes. The talks themselves should be up to 20 minutes in length, leaving 5 minutes for questions and discussion. Facilities available will include an overhead projector and computer projector. Please use the special equipment request form if you require any other equipment.

If you have any problems with formatting or the deadline, you need to see one of the organisers before the cut-off date.

Venue

The conference venue is the is the beautiful Club Capricorn , which is a simple 1 hour drive north from Perth. It's on the ocean and it has two pools, so don't forget your bathers.